Yes we cran!

Necessity is the mother of invention, and last weekend, a bag of fresh cranberries the bf had purchased very badly needed to be used. A lightbulb flashed (tsssst….!) over my head while I was making French toast and I grabbed two large handfuls from the little cranberry bog I made for them (that is to [...]

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Sechuan button taste test

The way my bf and I experienced the Sechuan button was probably not the right way to go about it. We just popped the whole buds in our mouths and chewed them like cud. I’d highly recommend sharing a bud to start, because my mouth went into shock. “It’s like drinking battery acid,” said my [...]

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Press my button

Last week, my biz partner/friend brought these Sechuan buttons, which are purported to be unlike anything you’ve ever tasted with results that mimic Altoids and Pop-Rocks and Tellicherries times 200 to the nth power. I haven’t tried them yet, though, mainly because I just don’t know what the heck to do with them. This Washington [...]

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Fun, home-grown and home-made

Between a quick trip to the beach and a little get-together Saturday night, we stopped by at my bf’s childhood home to feed the cats (his parents are away) and pick some fruit. I knew his mother is a big gardener, and I knew these fruit bushes existed, but it was the first time I [...]

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Right as (post) rain

I hadn’t thought of what the June rain spells could do to the berry crops; I just wanted our latitude/longitude coordinates to be un-swapped with London’s. Were they the reason why we haven’t seen any wild strawberries at the market this year? Oh, elusive happiness. But here‘s a great idea of what to do with [...]

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Vanilla (adv)ice

I combed over “The Story of Vanilla,” a little booklet that Nielsen-Massey Vanillas, Inc. put out at the Fancy Food Show. I was looking for the vanilla authority to tell me which type of vanilla is the best: Madagascar, Mexican, Tahitian? Ugandan, Costa Rican, Indian? Papua New Guinean (Guinese?)? Head to explode in 5, 4, [...]

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Fruit pie in the sky

Those of you who know me pretty well are probably sick of hearing me threaten no one in particular that I’m going to pack up and move to the West Coast again. ‘Christonastick, I thought she let that one go,’ reads the thought bubble from your head right now. “What about Portland?” I ask often [...]

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Mmm, memories

We were in NJ on Saturday en route to visiting family, so we stopped at the giant Wal-Mart-ish Korean food shopping complex in Ridgefield, NJ, called Hmart. A smaller outpost is right smack in the middle of 32nd Street, but this sprawling market is no joke. You want a trip back to your motherland down [...]

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Agenda: Ingredient hunting, planning ahead

At last, I picked up a bottle of sherry vinegar for the rhubarb pickle project: El Majuelo Vinagre de Jerez. Except I bought the rhubarb stalks a week and a half ago, and now they’re flaccid from spending a long time in the crisper. (Then why are they called crispers?) How do I live with [...]

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What the. . .??!

I don’t know what’s going on at Nature’s Yoke (whoops, not Alderfer Poultry Farms as stated earlier), but four eggs from the same half-dozen looked like this (the fourth was cracked separately from this bowl). Does having twins in chicken-land have any parallels to having twins as a woman (i.e., is this what happened to [...]

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